Too many years ago. This was my quick-and-dirty project. What happens when I go for a truly epic project?

(It's kinda morphed into something like that during development, hasn't it?)

Anyway, it's a major milestone, but still hard to recognize as we're whizzing past. Thanks for the support. I hope that when it's done it won't disappoint too badly.

[Our email server should recover soon ]

LOL - yeah. As always happens, the moment I let everyone know of anything non-routine over at the blog, my own server goes down just out of spite. And then I have to keep everyone updated. It's how things go, I've come to expect.

Yes, the Temple of Pokmor Xang will be back. There'll be a few changes, but you'll immediately recognize it.

The pilot was it's own thing. In a lot of ways, I've been treating this game as more of a (commercial) sequel to the pilot. About 15x - 20x larger. Or the pilot was kind of a rough draft of a short story, and this one is the novel based on that.

Seems like just yesterday I played the pilot. Just out of curiosity, did you keep the fate stars, I think that's what they're called. The bonuses that you get for not reloading a game. I thought that was a great idea. You could still save the game, but it rewarded you for not reloading the game as much.

Yep, they are still there, though I really do need to kick up their visual effects before I release. Part of the process I'm going through now that all the main quests are done (I may be adding some more little sub-quests during this stage just to round things out a little bit) is balancing the appropriate XP value, material rewards, and drama point awards.

Everything is TOTALLY out-of-whack right now, balance wise, as you can probably expect.

Congratulations. I enjoyed the Pilot quite myself, especially the humour in it.

I think you and everyone else involved are doing good work, projecting from the Pilot and the blogs I read so far.

—  Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius  and a lot of courage  to move in the opposite direction. (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

This is just the first game of the three - the other two aren't as far along. But since I'm not planning on doing the Ultima thing with these games, I'm really looking forward to actually taking better use of the full engine than I have with this first game.

Thanks for all the well-wishes. I am painfully aware of how long this little project has taken, which would be more than enough time for me - as an outside observer - to lose faith and interest. It's not like this is some kind of ubergame or anything. It's basically one dude saying, "Hey, let's play a giant game of D&D at my house one of these weeks, when I get my adventure done and all the miniatures painted." Or something.

Congratulations Rampant not many of us make it that far!!!! Just don't do the mistake of releasing it too early because you are tired of the game taking so long…… 5 weeks final polish could be the difference between medicore and good….. ( I know you are not anywhere near there yet ) and make sure to have a good beta with a bunch of testers…… it looks like a lot of games these days don't even do beta… probably because of piracy…. they are so afraid the beta will leak and people will play it and say the game sucks… so instead of having beta they release the game in beta and have people saying it sucks

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
they are so afraid the beta will leak and people will play it and say the game sucks… so instead of having beta they release the game in beta and have people saying it sucks

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
Thanks for all the well-wishes. I am painfully aware of how long this little project has taken, which would be more than enough time for me - as an outside observer - to lose faith and interest.

Please take into consideration that your blog entries also played a role in that.

They were very often ineresting to read, sometimes even just outright funny - but anyway, they helped to keep the "spark of interest" alive.

Without you constantly updating, it would have been much less interesting, I just guess.

—  Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius  and a lot of courage  to move in the opposite direction. (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)